


Figuring It Out

by Valmouth



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Eventualities, M/M, Retirement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 20:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valmouth/pseuds/Valmouth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They go by slow stages over the next three days. They kiss a lot, they talk a little, they get used to the idea of this strange friendship moving sideways to a sexual relationship. There’s a lot that they know about each other but it’s not the right kind of stuff to base a relationship on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Figuring It Out

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own no rights to these two real people, or to the other real people and places mentioned herein. I mean no offence by posting this and certainly make no money this. This is entirely fictional.

It takes them ten years to figure it out, and even then it almost ends before it begins. Rafa is dealing with the dying embers of a prior relationship and Roger is terrified by this sudden sexual identity crisis- neither of them is prepared for it.

They share one kiss before Rafa catches a flight back to Madrid.

Roger spends the next five days in a state of high anxiety. 

It takes five months before he picks up the phone and hears Rafa’s voice on the other end. Rafa sounds determined and decisive and Roger wants to put the phone down so he can preserve what’s left of his sanity but in the end he can’t. He listens to Rafa tell him that they have a thing and maybe they can try seeing each other.

Roger doesn’t think it’s a good idea at all but then he’s nervous. He’s confused and half-angry and things are beginning to make a lot more sense to him now that he’s replaying old events in light of new revelations. 

They meet on neutral territory, and they agree to meet at the restaurant. Roger gets there first and he has to wait a minute because the reservation was made in Rafa’s name but the waiter hesitates doubtfully over his book when Roger uses the name ‘Nadal’. Roger offers ‘Parera’ in a rush of insight and the waiter smiles politely and shows him to a table.

It’s enough to shake him. He spends the next three minutes looking at the tablecloth, his watch, and the entrance, which is how he knows the exact moment that Rafa steps into view.

Rafa looks much the same: older, thicker around the middle, more reserved, but the same. He still smiles the same way. He still laughs fairly easily. He still talks with his hands. 

Roger has a split second of panic where he thinks he should stand up and wave, or stand up and smile, or stand up and offer an embrace, or stand up and pull out Rafa’s chair or something but he’s so overloaded with crowding, contradictory impulses and nerves that he ends up sitting absolutely still and just watching. 

Rafa doesn’t seem to be wildly enthusiastic about this meeting either. He walks in with a reserved smile, pulls out his own chair and sits down rather slowly. As if he’d rather not.

Roger tenses at that.

The conversation is stilted; there’s not much of a change in news since they last spoke. Rafa asks a few general questions about Roger’s daughters, his family, and Roger asks politely about Rafa’s family. He congratulates Rafa on Mirabel’s engagement. Rafa doesn’t look all that pleased but he accepts it with a stiff shrug.

Roger wishes he’d never agreed to this date. It’s going so badly that he drinks wine with a kind of fatal desperation, hoping for inspiration in his wineglass.

It doesn’t exactly come but he gets a bit bolder, and he asks Rafa a burning question that he’s been biting back for the whole evening- “Did you break up with that guy?”

Rafa’s brows pull together over the bridge of his nose as he says, “Yes. I told you before, when I called, no?”

Roger remembers that he had but that’s not quite what he was asking. He reviews his previous question and then starts again- “How did you... I mean, you are okay about it?”

“Yes. Why?”

Roger can’t really think of how to say it so he shrugs, and then he mutters, “You were very upset when we met before, you know.”

“Ah.” Rafa puts down his fork. “I am upset before but this is not for because I am upset.” He reaches out and puts his hand on top of Roger’s. Out in the open, right there in the restaurant.

Roger’s fingers twitch and Rafa removes his hand immediately. Roger grabs it back just as it’s retreating and maybe he holds on a bit too tight but it’s the way things go. Rafa looks somewhat relieved and gratified, a little less hopeless.

They talk determinedly for the rest of the evening- which doesn’t last much longer- and it ends up that they’re staying in hotels that are on the same street. They go to Roger’s hotel room for a drink and the privacy seems so much more intent, so much more dangerous, but Rafa does absolutely nothing except have a drink and then leave.

Roger shuts the door behind him and it’s partly a relief to get himself off beneath the blanket and partly a guilty pleasure. He tries to imagine how it would be if Rafa was in bed with him, and the thought is enough to get him harder than he has been in a long time.

Roger takes his pride well in hand and calls Rafa the next afternoon, asking if he wants to see a movie. There’s a new movie out and he knows Rafa’s great love of the cinema. It sounds like a good plan- being in public where everybody is focused on something else- and so they wind up in the back of the movie theatre.

It’s clichéd but Roger gives in to the urge to touch Rafa there, to lean closer and slowly tangle his fingers with Rafa’s, and since Rafa doesn’t say a word and doesn’t pull back, he decides that it’s alright to hold on for the rest of the movie. 

When the lights go up, Roger lets go and they walk out, not saying a word about that but shaking their heads at the inanity of the plot and complaining about how stupid the female lead was. Rafa insists that the movie was not that bad but Roger thinks it was pure rubbish.

“Even my daughters will hate it,” he says, “And they are only eleven.”

“You let Myla and Charlene watch movies like this?” Rafa raises his eyebrows, “With so much blood and guns?”

“No,” Roger agrees wryly, “I just mean that even they will think this story is stupid.”

Rafa is quiet for a few minutes and then says, “You want to come to my hotel?”

They end up in Rafa’s hotel room and it’s Roger who moves in close, who drops a hand on Rafa’s shoulder, and then Rafa leans forward and kisses him. It’s not exactly a romantic kiss but it is a kiss, and Roger thinks he wouldn’t mind more of it.

Rafa waits for it, watching closely to make sure that this isn’t going to backfire on him. He gets his answer when the hand on his shoulder lifts and tangles in his hair. 

They go by slow stages over the next three days. They kiss a lot, they talk a little, they get used to the idea of this strange friendship moving sideways to a sexual relationship. 

There’s a lot that they know about each other but it’s not the right kind of stuff to base a relationship on. Rafa, for instance, knows all about Roger’s self-doubt and nerves and temper, and Roger knows about Rafa’s stubbornness and competitive need to win at all costs to his well-being. But neither of them really knows how the other half lives until they start to wake up in the same room in the mornings.

Rafa doesn’t drink coffee, Roger doesn’t use sugar. They have to figure out what they can both do together and it’s worse when they’re in a hotel because then there’s nothing very much to occupy them in terms of running a household. The sex is good but the talking is still difficult. 

Rafa will slip into Catalan during sex and Roger whispers Swiss German nothings into Rafa’s hair when they’re done and it’s all very exotic but then they don’t exactly know what the other is saying. 

Rafa tries to teach Roger Mallorqui but Roger knows a smattering of Spanish and it’s difficult to separate the two even when Rafa gives him a twenty minute lecture on how the two are different.

They talk about how to tell people. Rafa’s family knows about Rafa’s preferences but they don’t know who Rafa’s preference of the moment is, and Roger thinks that they would not entirely approve of Rafa dating an old tennis rival. God knows he doesn’t think Mirka will take kindly to it. He has visions of how things with his ex-wife could go horribly wrong and how she could, if she wanted, take him to court for full custody of their two daughters.

In the end, the worries come to nothing. Roger flies back to Basel and he takes the opportunity to speak to Mirka when she drops the girls off at his place for a glorious two weeks of single fatherhood. 

Roger sends the girls upstairs to unpack and takes Mirka to his study. He tells her the truth, looking her anxiously in the face and waiting for her to react in his worst case scenario.

She looks a bit grim when she asks how it happened. He hedges, not sure if this is bringing up all the old trauma of the divorce, but he gives her the bare details of finding out and being confused and then he tries to promise her that it was all unexpected and that he isn’t going lightly into this and he’s not going to expose the girls to any wilful experimentation or mid-life crises.

He starts to see an odd look on Mirka’s face around the time that he talks about being confused. It increases until the moment when he starts to make his promises to protect the girls from finding out about it and then Mirka interrupts him with a hand up.

“Is this serious?” she asks, “With Rafa?”

And Roger looks over Mirka’s shoulder but he says it may be in as colourless a voice as he can manage. “I don’t know,” he says.

 “Oh.”

She shakes her head and at first he thinks she’s judging him but she acts quite gently towards him, as if she’s afraid of saying something wrong. She smiles and she says she’s glad for him, and she says it’s good that he found someone and she will support him in any way she can.

He tells Rafa how relieved he is on the phone that night. Rafa snorts and tells him that he always knew Mirka would be sensible about it.

They book into an exclusive resort and spend an extraordinary week just relaxing on the private beach. It’s expensive but the privacy is worth it. The villa has two bedrooms but they only ever use one, and the sex is better than they remember. 

Roger translates into English what he whispers into Rafa’s ear after sex in Swiss German and Rafa laughs at him for being so stupidly sappy, but then Rafa gets on his knees and blows Roger so hard against the breakfast bar that clearly the stupidly sappy drivel worked its magic. 

Rafa winces as he gets to his feet. Roger is never unaware of the state of Rafa’s knees but now it’s pulled back into the forefront of his mind. That night he runs a hand over the surgical scars and fingers them gently, as if just a touch could hurt Rafa as much as a hard match on a hard court.

The one thing they don’t do at the resort is use the tennis courts. There are private tennis courts at the club just ten minutes away but by an unspoken decision, they leave tennis out of it. It’s too public. Just about anybody on the island could be there. And anyway, a tennis court is where they are competitors. They don’t think they want to deal with that sort of baggage when it’s all so new.

It’s hard enough sharing the same space. Roger tries not to get in the way of certain rituals that Rafa has at various times of the day, and Rafa tries not to disturb Roger when he’s in the middle of his meditation. They side-step around music and television and who does the dishes and at first it’s all about party manners and trying to be nice, but then the headaches come along with salt-water tiredness and someone eventually damns the dirty plates to hell in favour of collapsing onto the couch and it begins to get more homely, more earthy.

By the time they leave the villa at the end of a week, they know a bit more about how the other half lives. 

They stop at Mallorca for a few days. 

Roger does not meet Rafa’s family but he gets to stay in Rafa’s house. He finds a forgotten picture in a corner and he picks it up, tense and nervous all over again at the sight of Rafa in a clearly happy, clearly domestic relationship with another man. He’s only half jealous; the picture also bothers him because he doesn’t know if this is how he wants this to end. 

He thinks about that in the evening, when Rafa is watching football and Roger is pretending to be having a shower. He doesn’t know how far this relationship can go. He’s never been in a relationship with another man. He tries to compare it to relationships he’s had with women but it doesn’t work the same way- it’s Rafa. And clearly that implies a whole new category altogether.

He gets out of the shower and shakes his damp hair out of his eyes. When he exits the room, Rafa is sitting on the bed, the sound of a cheering football crowd blatantly ignored in favour of pouncing on an old tennis rival freshly washed and dressed. They take their time, trailing open-mouth kisses over each other’s skin and Roger lets himself wonder if it would really be so bad if it were a bit less sexual and a bit more domestic.

He hasn’t been in a domestic relationship since Mirka.

He makes breakfast the next day and Rafa looks so comically bemused that it’s funny. Roger relaxes when Rafa takes him out on the boat and shows him what does what. It reminds them of when they were much younger and when there were cameras on the boat with them, and how Rafa noticed that Roger wasn’t quite comfortable with the rocking and the unexpected jerks and splashes and contrived to sit the both of them down using the cameras as an excuse to give a mini interview.

“I was trying to act like I was fine, you know,” Roger laughs.

“Si. But I see how you are holding to the side,” Rafa tells him, “I know how you look uncomfortable.”

Roger thinks that they know quite a lot of how the other’s mind works.

Which is why he knows Rafa is biting back something he really wants to discuss the evening before Roger flies out from Majorca. 

“What?” he asks, finally irritated by the half-sentences and monosyllables.

Rafa shoots him a wary glance but he says, “I want to ask if this is okay. We are okay. You are... you are...”

“I am what?” Roger prompts. 

“You are happy?”

Roger knows what Rafa means but sometimes he gets tired of Rafa’s half-sentences and monosyllables and how he has to gouge the words out of him. Even now, he wants to force Rafa to be a bit more specific but he knows when he pushes too far that Rafa gets frustrated and just leaves. So Roger swallows down the mild annoyance and lets himself answer the question- “Yes.”

They don’t say anything else before Roger leaves, but Roger is not surprised to hear from Rafa that Rafa’s parents have now been informed of their budding romance. He has a moment to wonder if Toni will be horribly shocked and upset to find out that Rafa is dating an arch old rival but he comes to the conclusion that the rivalry is ten years in the past and anyway, Toni never seemed to particularly care about him beyond his ability to play tennis.

He thinks it over for a few days and then calls his parents for dinner. He waits until they’re full and mellow before he broaches the subject. They’re not as horribly shocked as he had thought they would be. He gets a bit upset about that.

His mother looks at his father and then says carefully that if it had to happen, then it’s good that it happens with Rafa.

Roger is confused by this. The publicity will always be worse because it’s Rafa but he has a feeling that that’s not what his mother means. 

“We thought there was something there years ago,” his father says bluntly, “We’re sorry we can’t be surprised now.”

It’s a bit sharp but it suddenly clicks into place and Roger calls Mirka immediately after his parents leave. It’s late at night but he’s too angry to wait. “You knew I was gay,” he said.

And she tells him not to be stupid; she can’t know something like that if he doesn’t know it himself. She agrees that she had suspected, though. He didn’t respond right with her. And there was that thing with Rafa.

“I’m not gay,” he says.

“Maybe you’re bisexual,” she says, “Or maybe it’s Rafa.”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Mirka? You kept saying I had someone else and I thought you meant I was having an affair.”

“I thought you knew what I meant.”

“I didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.”

There isn’t much else to say about that. Roger isn’t sure what he is but apparently neither Mirka nor his parents are particularly surprised to hear that he is in a relationship with Rafael Nadal. He isn’t sure what about that situation is so unsurprising for them but he finds it unnerving to think that people suspected that this would happen ten years ago.

He finds himself unable to sleep again, worrying about how this will work, about the publicity, about how his daughters will be affected by it. He worries about his assets in the Middle East and about what Rafa wants from him that Rafa will not tell him about until it’s too late. 

He goes back to Manacor at the end of the month and Rafa is clearly a little worried. Roger looks tired and thin; he looks like he’s walking on eggshells. All the old awkwardness is back and Rafa isn’t sure why but he does know that he doesn’t like it. It makes him nervous and he ends up having to perform his rituals in order to relieve the stress.

And Rafa doesn’t like having to perform his rituals in front of an audience. It was hard enough to come to terms with them himself without now exposing this private matter to the gaze of someone who might not understand, who might laugh. Rafa’s had enough of people laughing at the way he lines up his water bottles on a court.

But Roger doesn’t laugh when he notices. 

Rafa knows he’s been discovered when Roger pauses in the kitchen and watches silently while Rafa steps from tile square to tile square and takes care not to step on the lines between. They don’t speak about it but Roger wraps his arms around Rafa at night and whispers in Swiss German that Rafa can’t understand but likes the sound of.

Roger rests his head on the same pillow and listens to Rafa breathing and the next morning he takes care to be up as early as possible. He makes breakfast, and he tries to make conversation and he hands Rafa a cup with hot chocolate and the look on Rafa’s face is enough to tell him that it’s a start.

He has noticed, after all. They know enough about each other to know how it works.

Two days later, three days before Roger has to leave for Basil to be there when his daughters go on holiday, he digs into his bag and pulls out something that makes Rafa raise his eyebrows.

“You bring a racquet?” Rafa asks, “Here?”

“We can play, right?” Roger tests his forehand with a light swing across thin air.

“But everybody know if we go on the court. They see us.”

Roger grins. “So what? I’m not kissing you on a court, you know. We’re just playing tennis.” The grin slips slightly. “Your knees will be okay to play?”

“For little while, yes,” Rafa considers. He shakes his head. “You are serious? You want to go in public and play tennis?”

“Yeah. It will be fun.”

On their way to the car, Roger doesn’t look at Rafa but he says, “I think maybe we need to build a court if we move in together.”

Rafa almost crashes but they survive, and Roger learns not to spring these sorts of surprises on Rafa when they’re on a road.

 


End file.
